Originally Posted By nothingshocking⏩

Originally Posted By keyboardworkout⏩

Originally Posted By ElMarkino⏩

The data, analyzed by Kaiser Health News, come from daily payroll records Medicare only recently began gathering and publishing from more than 14,000 nursing homes, as required by the Affordable Care Act of 2010. Medicare previously had been rating each facility’s staffing levels based on the homes’ own unverified reports, making it possible to game the system.

The payroll records provide the strongest evidence that, over the past decade, the government’s five-star rating system for nursing homes often exaggerated staffing levels and rarely identified the periods of thin staffing that were common. Medicare is now relying on the new data to evaluate staffing, but the revamped star ratings still mask the erratic levels of people working from day to day.

WhileMedicare does not set a minimum resident-to-staff ratio, it does require the presence of a registered nurse for eight hours a day and a licensed nurse at all times.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the federal agency that oversees nursing home inspections, said in a statement that it “is concerned and taking steps to address fluctuations in staffing levels” that have emerged from the new data. This month, it said it would lower ratings for nursing homes that had gone seven or more days without a registered nurse.

In April, the government started using daily payroll reports to calculate average staffing ratings, replacing the old method, which relied on homes to report staffing for the two weeks before an inspection. The homes sometimes anticipated when an inspection would happen and could staff up before it.

The new records show that on at least one day during the last three months of 2017 — the most recent period for which data were available — a quarter of facilities reported no registered nurses at work.

Of the more than 14,000 nursing homes submitting payroll records, 7 in 10 had lower staffing using the new method, with a 12 percent average decrease, the data show. And as numerous studies have found, homes with lower staffing tended to have more health code violations — another crucial measure of quality.

Even with more reliable data, Medicare’s five-star rating system still has shortcomings. Medicare still assigns stars by comparing a home to other facilities, essentially grading on a curve. As a result, many homes have kept their rating even though their payroll records showed lower staffing than before. Also, Medicare did not rate more than 1,000 facilities, either because of data anomalies or because they were too new to have a staffing history.

Originally Posted By katya422⏩

Originally Posted By whitepaper⏩

The National Institute on Retirement Security reports that almost 40 million households have no retirement savings, while the Employee Benefit Research Institute estimates Americans have a retirement savings deficit of $4.3 trillion.

Average American Retirement Savings by Age

According to Fidelity, the following is what the average American has saved for retirement:

20 to 29: $15,000

30 to 39: $50,800

40 to 49: $120,800

50 to 59: $203,600

60 to 69: $229,100

I can’t speak for others but I will be 88 and have not a single living soul left alive. I tend o my own affairs l00% and they are l00% current and up to date. I am now researching g my options if something happened and I could not stay in assisted living. It is a very complex subject but I assure you, I WILL FIND THE ANSWERS - N O W - before anything happens. I will never, ever, no matter what happens go into a nursing home - never, ever! I won’t go into details but I am researching and believe I know what to do to prevent that if it should happen.